Re: st: FW: Making changes to Forest plot to increase visibility of the plot

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Not much is obvious from this as you have not indicated even what
command(s) you are using. If you try to plot a large number of studies
in a fixed space, then some problems with text legibility are all too
likely. Printing the graph on an entire sheet (e.g. A4 size, as you
appear to be based in the UK) or a  large sheet of paper is naturally
one way round this. If you are thinking of a thesis or report you are
writing, you are in charge. If you are preparing a slide for a talk,
your options are more limited, except possibly showing a single graph
of all the studies and then splitting them into groups.

Forest plots aside, the issues are illustrated by

sysuse auto, clear
graph dot (asis) mpg, over(make, sort(1))
graph dot (asis) mpg if foreign, over(make, sort(1))

The first graph has 74 distinct levels and is unreadable; the second
has 20 and is fine. Somewhere in between is a threshold between an
unacceptable and an acceptable display.

More positively, it is arguable that with a very large number of
studies, showing the identity of each may not be important for all
purposes. You can always include a table in a report with all the
details for look-up purposes.

Nick

On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Muhammad Riaz <riaz_stata@live.co.uk> wrote:

 I would be grateful if any one out there can guide me to a
method/command line for Stata to increase the forest plot visibility.
I have created a forest plot for a large number of studies in meta
analyses, but the font size and other display in the graph is very
blared and can not be seen without a large zooming. is there any way I
can increase the visibility of this graph, I was trying to edit the
forest plot graph in stata 10 but obviously this is not possible with
forest plots.
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